Category talk:Stories by Genre
He who wielded the Staff of Bureaucracy, the Master of Red Tape, gazed upon the Earthen Ring Wiki and said "Users should be able to find stories by genre. Let there be a category for every taste of literature within the World of Warcraft!" And 'lo, it was so! Creating a new genre category is rather straightforward. First, go to http://earthenring.wikia.com/index.php?title=Category:Name_of_your_genre_here&action=edit ...where "Name_of_your_genre_here" is replaced with whatever the genre is called. Second, in the text box, put in a blurb describing what the category is about, if the name of the genre doesn't make it obvious. ...or maybe put in a description, anyway, because maybe it's not obvious to everyone. After all, maybe there really are people out there who don't know what romance is. Third, put in the lines: To view a list of stories in other genres, please visit Stories by Genre. Category:Stories_by_Genre One of those lines serves as a clear guide to readers that it's a subcategory of a higher category (very important for new people who don't know a wiki too well). The other line will trigger the Wiki program code into actually putting your new genre category into Category:Stories_by_Genre. --Cogitatus 07:17, 20 February 2008 (UTC) :This follows the lead set by Eupheria in the art section and likely makes the stories (like the art) more accessible. Great idea! --Tai 13:47, 20 February 2008 (UTC) ::It looks like Eupheria created an image gallery categorized according to format (drawings, screenshots, and photographs). Is this what you refer to? ::--Cogitatus 18:40, 20 February 2008 (UTC) :::Yes. My comment was just that breaking the material (art, or, in this case, fiction) into sub-categories seems like a great idea. --Tai 19:46, 20 February 2008 (UTC) Zomg more tags. Sounds good. I guess we can put a story in more than one genre, too? Like horror and adventure, or something? --Krelle 14:26, 20 February 2008 (UTC) Yes. Yes, you can, and it should show up in both Category:Horror and Category:Adventure. When applying the Category tags, though, I ask everyone to keep in mind that a significant amount of that genre should be present in the story. Otherwise, applying the Category tag is meaningless. For example, a romantic story that cracks a joke every once-in-a-while is probably best left only in Category:Romance. However, if the story reads like a romantic sitcom, then it's worthwhile to put both the Category:Romance and Category:Humor tags on it. Right now, I'm thinking about whether or not it's possible to search for all stories that are in two or more arbitrary categories without manually managing a Category:Horror-Adventure category. I'm only tossing this out as a thought for future development, though; for the time being, if we can just get 90% of the existing stories into appropriate genre categories, then we'll have accomplished something. --Cogitatus 18:23, 20 February 2008 (UTC) :I have an idea for such a thing by using bits of code that was intended for the abbreviated Biobox. If I remember the code correctly, it would allow for multiple genres to be entered, with a steadily-building grouping. The result would be a template where the user would enter something like this into the page: :Genres :|genre1=Horror :|genre2=Romance :|genre3=Iambic Pentameter :|genre4= :}} :And the result would be: :Category:HorrorCategory:RomanceCategory:Iambic PentameterCategory:Horror-RomanceCategory:Romance-Iambic PentameterCategory:Horror-Iambic PentameterCategory:Horror-Romance-Iambic Pentameter :The task, for me, too hard may be. Unknown if this is more VB. :--Lilithia 19:00, 20 February 2008 (UTC) ::Urgh. I'm going to strain my brain trying to remember how that worked but the effect was what you've described Lil. Off to the Hidden Biobox page! ::... and back! ::If I recall (a big 'if'), that Hidden Biobox format was forced because you don't have all combinations of race, class and faction, and so we needed to generate the mixed categories as Lil has put in the output above (e.g., Romance-Iambic Pentameter). Do genres need the mixed designation or do they simply need to show up in each of the genres? For example, do we need/want a category called Horror-Action, or does it suffice for it to have both the Horror tag and the Action tag? --Tai 19:46, 20 February 2008 (UTC) :::If we say "it suffices for it to have the Horror tag and the Action tag" now and change our minds later, how much work would be involved in making the changeover for each story? :::--Cogitatus 20:21, 20 February 2008 (UTC) ::::I believe that, before we make a template, establish a system, and encourage the user community to adapt to it, we should do as Tai implied and seriously ask ourselves: 'How often will someone want to see all of the stories on the wiki that are simultaneously Action-Adventure-Buddy-Road-Noir?' ::::--Lilithia 14:39, 21 February 2008 (UTC)